What Were Soviet Computers Like?

kwertii asks: "Does anyone have any information on computing in the former Soviet Union? A Google search turned up this virtual museum, which has some good historical background on the development of early Soviet computer technology (a lot only in Russian, unfortunately) but not much on later systems. What sorts of architectures did Soviet computers use? Were there any radically different computing concepts in use, like a standard 9-bit byte or something? What kind of operating systems were common? How has the end of the Cold War and the large scale introduction of Western computer technology affected the course of Russian computer development?"

Comments

link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rickman.com/brett/russian_computing/ -- also has bibliography to printed materials

Ryad line

[clem.dickey]

In the late 70s or early 80s ACM's "Computing Surverys" ran an article on Soviet computing. Here's what I remember:

The Soviets said that military computers were generally original designs.

Most of the commercial computers were either IBM 360/370 models diverted through 3rd countries (direct exports were prohibited) or the Soviet "Ryad" line. Ryads were 360/370 copies. Not having to worry about copyright andd patent issues, the East copied IBM mainframes directly. IBM engineers recognized an I/O problem with one Soviet model, since the IBM original had the same problem. Just as the 360 model development was split among groups in Poughkeepsie and Endicott, different Soviet Bloc countries were assigned development/manufacturiing responsibility for the copies.

Software was, of course, pirated OS/360. (Back in those days, software came with source.)

Re:Ryad line

[RGRistroph]

I found the acm.org's site search to be unuseable on linux/mozilla, which is ironic -- however, a google search on "soviet site:acm.org" turned up some interesting papers available as pdf (special tribute to Russian Dmitry Sklyarov ?):

The Soviet Bloc's Unified System of Computers by N.C. Davis and S.E. Goodman -- this talks about the "Ryad" s/360 clones.

Computing in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe -- more an overview, but has a biography.

There are more, but the google search page is probably the place to go, rather than me cutting-and-pasting it here.

By the way, that guy S.E. Goodman seems to have also written an article about Red China's internet infrastructure.

Found lots of information

[Evil Attraction]

I found some related (and maybe some not so related) information on this by using Google and searching for "soviet union computers technology". Here's a handful of links for ya;

• "Computing in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe"
• "Where did Soviet scientists go?"
• "Creator of the first stored program computer in continental Europe"

Not much, but you might find more for yourself by refining your search a little.

--
Evil Attraction

Ukraine

[Detritus]

See this for a Ukrainian perspective on Soviet computer history.

You also may want to do a google search on the comp.arch newsgroup. I think the topic has been discussed there.

The Soviets reverse engineered a number of American designs (IBM 360, PDP-11). They also did some original designs for special applications.

Some of the work was farmed out to other Warsaw Pact countries, such as the GDR.

Re:Another..

[morcheeba]

Here's some info on the Agat - a clone of an Apple II.

If you want to buy an old Russian computer, try here (has many pictures!). I don't know if this guy's stock is representative of 1980's Russian computing, but it contains a lot (31) of Sinclair clones, and information on other computers, including IBM PC-compatibles. If nothing, the names listed should help searches.

Re:Another..

[deicide]

Sinclair clones are VERY reprepsentative of personal computer market of that time. There were literally dozens of variants, with various extensions and addons, custom operating systems, modified OS, etc. They were self-made (I've had one of those, total cost: $20), with mass-produced pc boards and cases, and even factory-made (even with OS translated to russian.

Most of them connected to a TV and used tape recorders for storage. Eventually, I had a dot-matrix printer and could've gotten a 5" floppy drive if I really wanted. I've seen mice, modems and light pens. I've seen cable and broadcast tv system's audio channel used to broadcast binary data when station wasn't broadcasting regular programming (would that be predecessor to cable modems?) We would record audio to tapes and then load them back into computer.

There were clones of 286 PC's as well (Poisk), although that was just about when I moved to this side of the ocean..

There were also completely original computers with BASIC or FORTRAN interpreter as "operating system".

Re:VAX - When you Care Enough to Steal the Very Be

[morcheeba]

Those words were in Cyrillic (of course)... see them on the chip here!

The lines were:

[Alex Belits]

1. "BESM"/"Elbrus" line -- originally developed.
2. "ES" Line -- clone of IBM 360 line
3. "Elektronika"/"SM" line -- clone of PDP-11 line, often with some creative changes (high-density floppies, graphics controlers on a second PDP-11 CPU), then some VAXen
4. "DWK"/"UKNC" line -- same as "SM", but made as a desktop. "DWK" models 3 and 4 were built as a single unit with terminal (keyboard was separate), "UKNC" was a very nice flat box with builtin keyboard and extension connectors at the top, connected to a separate monitor.
5. "BK-0010" -- can be described as a PDP-11 squeezed into Sinclair's case, everything was in the keyboard, with TV output, tape recorder connector, and on some models a serial port.
6. "Elektronika-85" -- Dec Pro/350 clone. Was hated just as much as its prototype.
7. "ES-1840","Iskra-1030" lines -- IBM PC clones, usually with some changes. Appeared in early 90's and soon were replaced by conventional PC clones.
8. "Radio-86RK","Specialist" -- hobbyist 8080-based boxes, never were mass-produced but popular among various computer enthusiasts.
9. "Sinclair" clones

There were some others, however I have mentioned the most popular ones.